Musical toys have been made in the past in which a hollow tube is held at one end and swung around in a generally circular path to induce a flow of air through the tube and produce a musical tone by activating a vibrating reed or whistle element mounted within the tube. One example of such a musical toy is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2, 637,141 which is issued to De Nisco on May 5, 1953, for a "Musical Toy." Referring to FIG. 1 of the De Nisco patent, air flow is induced through a tube 12 by swinging the tube around in a generally circular path to generate a differential pressure between its two open ends 13 and 15. When the tube 12 is rotated about pin 11, the linear velocity of the ends of the tube will be equal to 2.pi. LW, where L is the distance between the end of the tube and pin 11, and W is the rotary speed at which the tube is rotated. Accordingly, in the embodiment illustrated in FIG. 1 of the De Nisco patent, end 15 of tube 12 will travel at approximately twelve times the linear velocity of end 13 when the tube is rotated about pin 11. It is well known to those skilled in the art that a flow of air transverse to the open end of a tube causes a decrease in pressure at the end of the tube which is directly proportional to the velocity of air flow. Therefore, the above noted differential of speed will produce a corresponding differential of pressure between the two ends 13 and 15 of tube 12, which in turn induces a flow of air from end 13 to end 15 and activates the whistle element 14 within tube 12.
Although the above noted prior art musical toy has proven successful in performing its intended function, it is subject to several serious limitations in that its vibrating reed or whistle structure inherently limits its tone to a single fixed frequency regardless of the amount of air flow, and the musical quality of the tone tends to be relatively thin and non-resonant in quality due to the small size of the vibrating reed or whistle structure. In addition, the utilization of a fixed pivot point for the rotating tube necessarily limits the size of the tube, which in turn limits the volume of the sound that can be obtained and prevents the tone of the vibrating reed or whistle assembly from being enriched by any significant overtones generated within the tube. Accordingly, the principal object of this invention is to provide a novel musical toy which is capable of producing richer, more resonant musical tones than the above noted prior art toy and which is capable of producing tones that can be varied in frequency and amplitude as opposed to being limited to a fixed frequency and amplitude.